[Khoi] Vinh says that in many ways, a lack of color is just as distinctive as filling up all our screens with an assortment of different hues, except that it doesn’t have the negative consequence of distracting the user from the content. It’s the reason why black-and-white design is so popular among photo apps like 500px. It’s probably not the best idea to have UI fighting for attention with the content your users are creating.

There’s been a lot of talk lately that Apple Music and Instagram could be receiving a design overhaul — removing most color from the interface. I’m not a user of either service, but the screenshots of Instagram’s “design test” look quite good to my eye. If you take a look at this site, though, you’ll quickly realize that I’m a huge fan of simplistic color palettes. I’m looking forward to other application designers following this trend.